Kim Jong-Il: Alive or Dead?

Japanese Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura thinks that the notorious North Korean dictator has been dead since 2003, and his network of imposters, previously in place for assassination-proofing purposes, has been carrying on his state visits and negotiations. A tantalizing conspiracy theory about one of the world's most eccentric leaders (really, Moammar Gadhafi gives him a run for his money) in arguably the world's most closed society is described in a Telegraph article:

"...Prof Shigemura says Kim was not seen in public for the 42 days after September 10, 2003, and in his book 'The True Character of Kim Jong Il' claims the man that North Koreans refer to as the "Dear Leader" died of diabetes.

'In the years before he died, Kim took some really big decisions on North Korea's relationships with the outside world,' says the professor, pointing to the historic June 2000 summit with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, a visit from Russian leader Vladimir Putin the following month and then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000.

The following January he was in China, met Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2002 - and admitted that Pyongyang had abducted Japanese nationals to train its spies - and August 2003 saw the opening of six-way talks on halting North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes.

Then, suddenly, Kim disappeared, says Shigemura, and there was chaos in the upper echelons of the country's leadership. 'I have been working on the book for four years,' said Shigemura, a former journalist for the Mainichi newspaper who was posted to Seoul for six years from 1979 and then served for another five years in Washington D.C. A North Korean agent told him in 1995 that he had met one of Kim's doubles - there have been as many as four - and that he used them to stand in at outside ceremonies because he was fearful of a coup.

After Kim's death, a group of four very senior officials in the regime decided to protect their own positions by making the stand-in more permanent. Whenever anyone meets the North Korean leader, Shigemura says one of the four is alongside him 'like a puppet-master.'"

Yes, it sounds like the Korean version of the Kevin Kline movie "Dave." Japan Today has more on the theory:

"...State television in October 2003 showed him touring a collective farm, but mention of the date of the visit was conspicuously absent. ... In the spring of 2006, says Shigemura, American spy satellites succeeded in photographing Kim. An analysis of the photographs led to an astonishing conclusion: Kim had grown 2.5 cm!

...Shukan Gendai asks a government official who helped plan Koizumi’s Pyongyang visits what he thinks of all this. His reply: 'Rumors of a dummy Kim began circulating after the (2004) summit. Some of us said we should have Kim’s voice prints analyzed. But if we did that and proved the prime minister had been conferring with a double, it could have destroyed the Koizumi administration. So we didn’t proceed.'"

The pic, by the way, is of Kim's 2007 summit with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun in Pyongyang. Compare photos from before and after 2003 at our new gallery.

(Photo by Pool/Getty Images)